‘We were not trained for this’ - Inequity bedevils online classes as teachers battle assessment and matriculation concerns as low turnout marks first week
Published:Sunday | October 11, 2020 | 12:12 AM
For Jamaica’s poorest children, schools are oases of solace from chaotic lives teeming with abuse, disenchantment and need. It’s much more than academics.
“And when you can’t get to see them face to face and hold them and hear them ... ,” paused St Aloysius Primary School teacher Nikesha Wright-Bryan, endearingly, “it is really depressing. Every night I go home, I feel guilty because it is as if I owe them something more.”
“I am willing to learn – very innovative – but I was not trained to interact like this,” continued the frustrated teacher, her decade-long career already buckling under the weight of the COVID-19-induced online school term. So far, the kinks are aplenty.
Some – like the embarrassingly limp Internet connection which almost drove grade coordinator Stephanie Tulloch to tears at Kingston College last week – may be teething pains.
So, too, may be the islandwide dearth and price gouging of Internet-enabled devices, Google Classroom application hiccups, and student orientation problems, hoped teachers, who reported that devices which were being sold for $9,000 two months ago are now being traded for no less than $15,000 in downtown Kingston.
But there are more ominous socio-economic challenges. Among them are interruptions from lewd music blaring on street sides as parents try to make their bread with children tucked beside them so as not to be left at home unsupervised. And in troubled tenement yards, requests to “turn it down” could quickly turn deadly.
“I know we can’t do the face-to-face thing, but this virtual learning is not equitable. And no matter what we do, when the dust settles, some children – even if we provide data and devices – are going to be helpless,” lamented Camecia Vassell, grade six teacher at St Michael’s Primary, a sanctuary for some of Jamaica’s hardest woven children.
“When they (parents) come to you and say, ‘Miss, is $500 alone me have and me going to cook some food and me can’t put data on my phone’. How do you tell a parent, ‘Yes, but we have class’?,” she continued. “I know that the Government is trying very hard, but we still have students that we will never reach online. The truth also is that some students are skills-oriented.”
Classes were more pauses and squeaks than meaningful lessons for Vassell last week. Inside her empty classroom, she hung on to the eager faces of 15 students on her computer screen. The class should have been almost twice that number, but half an hour earlier, it began with seven students.
One grade two teacher shrugged at the online-schooling concept, noting that simple assignments – even when dropped off at students’ home – are proving a challenge to complete.
MANY DISTRACTIONS
“Teaching online is harder than face to face where you can see the child’s body language, whether or not he is understanding,” explained Lisa Bailey, vice-principal at Mountain View Primary School, where roughly 50 per cent of students are connected to the Internet.
“With online, there are many distractions and you can’t demand that a child turns on the camera. Some parents don’t want you to see their background.”
Other teachers said they hoped to see fewer backgrounds, especially those with scantily clad parents popping up to assist the children.
More seriously, however, some teachers are worried about future assessment of students. At some high schools, there is usually a standardised test, taken six weeks after school starts.
But with the delayed start to the term and with each child possessing differing resources and connectivity, usually talkative teachers are now at a loss for words about the way forward.
“As it is, we give them the normal assignments, homework and projects, but as it relates to the physical testing going forward, that will have to be worked out,” said Tulloch.
In lauding the Ministry of Education’s efforts to improve connectivity and the heroism of teachers, Jamaica Teachers’ Association President Jasford Gabriel committed: “We are pretty confident from the standpoint of the JTA that our teachers are far more equipped and comfortable in terms of conducting more engaging lessons online.”
His remarks favoured Government reports that some 190,352 students and 15,466 teachers have already signed on to its online learning management system, which represents 32 per cent of students across the primary, secondary and tertiary school systems. Some 20,000 teachers have already been trained in the process.
The authorities have also promised learning kits, textbooks, worksheets, rental books, and electronic apps, slated to cost the Government approximately $620 million for primary and $200 million for secondary-level students; and an additional $20,000 gift vouchers for 36,000 students who are not on the government-aid programme PATH.
Mitsie Harris Dillon, interim president of the National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica, said she has been noting the challenges for both parents and teachers, but said the PTA is fully voluntary and is limited in the physical support it can offer to both groups.
“We encourage our parents to provide assistance and resources as best as they can; we know many may not have it,” she said. “We will keep the dialogue with the Government because we are aware that some parents might not appreciate online learning. We have to reach out more,” she said.
Five days after school started islandwide, some school teachers were still awaiting tablets, vouchers and email addresses for students from the education ministry as they openly fret for those students most dependent.
“Even though the classroom is empty, I still come here because I want the students to see that Miss is still at work and means business. It is a little late, but over the weekend, I plan to redecorate so they can still have that feeling of new charts on the walls even from home,” smiled Vassell.